Following huge success at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and a 2019 tour to cafes around the country Dante or Die’s ground-breaking digital hit User Not Found, written by Chris Goode, arrives this week in London, for a run at a coffee shop next to Battersea Power Station for a strictly limited two-week season. Time to get booking!
User Not Found, which examines what happens to our digital identities after we die, will run at The CoffeeWorks Project next to Battersea Power Station – in partnership with Nine Elms on the South Bank, in association with Battersea Arts Centre – from 17 May to 2 June 2019, with press nights on 21 and 22 May. Created by site-specific specialists Dante or Die, this ground-breaking theatrical experience is written by Chris Goode, directed by Daphna Attias and performed by Terry O’Donovan.
It’s the moment of your death.
There’s a magic button.
Do you delete your entire online legacy?
Or do you keep it – and leave the choice for someone else?
Terry and Luka were together for nine years until Luka left Terry. Then Luka died leaving Terry as his online legacy executor.
Through smartphones and headphones, the audience is immersed in one man’s story as he is faced with keeping or deleting. In a rapidly changing digital age, a story of contemporary grief unfolds through this intimate, funny performance that gently interrogates our need for connection and the fate of our digital afterlives.
A hit at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe
User Not Found was the hit show of Edinburgh 2018 as it examined our online legacies with humour and heartbreak. The show opened to excellent four- and five-star reviews in Edinburgh, before touring around the country to cafes last October and then again this spring, with further touring dates to be announced for this autumn. For these London dates, co-artistic director Terry O’Donovan reprises his celebrated Edinburgh turn, with tour star Andy McLeod also appearing at select performances.
User Not Found follows Dante or Die’s previous critically acclaimed work, including: Take On Me, which is currently on tour to leisure centres nationwide; Handle With Care by Chloe Moss; I Do, staged in hotels nationwide; and La Fille à la Mode at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and National Theatre. Daphna Attias also regularly creates nationwide tours with her celebrated dance-theatre company Peut-Être Theatre; and On The Wire, one of Terry O’Donovan’s last site-specific productions as director, was nominated for Best Production in The Irish Times Theatre Awards 2015.
Chris Goode is recognised as one of Britain’s most innovative and ground-breaking theatre-makers. Both Goode’s and Dante or Die’s acclaimed work in devised and site-specific theatre is constantly informed by the primacy of liveness, questioning the terms and conditions of the dramatic form itself for both performer and audience.
Dante or Die collaborated with digital agency Marmelo Digital to build a bespoke app that is central to the performance of User Not Found. The production is the recipient of In Good Company’s mid-career artist commission and was developed with the support of ArtsDepot’s Creative Residencies, Southbank Centre, University of Reading, The New Wolsey Theatre, Roundhouse London & Stone Nest. It’s funded by the International Music & Art Foundation, AHRC, Cockayne – Grants for the Arts & The London Community Foundation, The Wellcome Trust Public Engagement Fund & Arts Council England.
Show trailer
About Dante or Die
Founded in 2006 by Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan, Dante or Die makes bold and ambitious site-specific performances that tour across the country and internationally, gently transforming ordinary spaces to create unique and intimate theatrical experiences.
Their original productions interrogate and celebrate contemporary human stories that take place in everyday buildings, from hotel rooms to swimming pools to cafés. They have collaborated with leading arts venues across the UK – including the Traverse Theatre, The Lowry and the Almeida Theatre – alongside grassroots organisations in the localities in which they make work. Dante or Die are SITELINES Associate Artists at South Street Reading, which champions performance in unusual locations.
Dante or Die co-founders Daphna Attias & Terry O’Donovan
Making performances in different spaces opens up unexpected and exciting opportunities to create wide-ranging partnerships with organisations, businesses and communities, locally, nationally and internationally. Dante or Die collaborates with local people wherever they work, whether that’s in the research phase, in rehearsals or spreading the word about seeing a show or getting involved.
The team at Dante or Die is passionate about developing audiences and making projects open to as many people in every community. This includes a commitment to embedding BSL interpretation or captioning in all performances. The company’s participation and training initiatives nurture new talent, helping young people and those changing career paths to find employment in the arts.
The name Dante or Die comes from the site where Daphna and Terry first made a site-specific performance together in the skate park of Kennington Park many years ago. The grafitti containing the words Dante or Die is still scrawled there…
Partners
